Savannah Emergency Room Errors Lawyer
Emergency rooms in Savannah are high-pressure environments where medical professionals treat urgent and often life-threatening injuries. However, the intense atmosphere does not excuse caregivers in the ER from their duty to provide reasonable care to their patients.
If you have suffered from substandard care in an emergency room, it is wise to consult a Savannah emergency room errors lawyer before too much time passes. A malpractice attorney who understands emergency room liability could act quickly to collect and preserve the evidence needed to substantiate your claim and then present it in court using cutting-edge technology.
Compensating for the Consequences of an Emergency Room Error
When someone suffers harm due to mistakes in the ER, he or she may pursue compensation for a number of different effects caused by the negligent behavior of medical staff. These include both tangible economic losses as well as intangible consequences.
A Savannah emergency room errors attorney could help an injured patient seek compensation for:
- Time missed from work,
- Doctor and hospital bills,
- Future medical expenses,
- Reduced earnings in the future,
- Pain and suffering, and/or
- Emotional anguish.
Establishing Liability
In order to recover compensation, an injured patient must show that the doctors or other medical professionals involved failed to provide care meeting the reasonable standards for emergency room treatment. However, because ER doctors may lack information about a patient’s history and other factors, they are usually not held to the same standards as medical professionals performing duties in other circumstances. O.C.G.A. § 51-1-29.5 essentially provides immunity for malpractice claims arising out of an emergency room setting, unless it can be proven by a higher evidentiary burden, clear and convincing evidence, that the healthcare providers were grossly negligent.
As such, a patient filing suit after an ER error will need to prove gross negligence occurred. It is frequently necessary to bring in expert witnesses to testify as to what the standard should have been and how the failure to provide proper care caused additional injuries to the patient.
Moreover, the patient would likely need to obtain an affidavit from an expert as part of the threshold of proof to file a claim for compensation, according to O.C.G.A. § 9-11-9.1. An emergency room errors lawyer in Savannah could help locate the right expert to provide both the affidavit and testimony to establish liability.
When Emergency Room Staff May Be Liable
When patients suffer harm due to an emergency room error, usually no one involved intended to cause an injury. However, just because harm was not intentional does not mean that no one could be held legally responsible.
Errors that lead to actionable injuries could be caused by failure to provide adequate training to staff, poor sanitary conditions, miscommunication, improper allocation of staff, or failure to consult a patient’s available medical history.
Dedicated legal counsel could investigate to determine the cause of an error and determine which parties should shoulder the blame.
Consult a Savannah Emergency Room Errors Attorney
Emergency room errors can and do cause lasting harm. Injured patients may need substantial additional care and may suffer a great deal of pain that could have been avoided.
If you or a loved one suffered harm due to mistakes by an ER doctor or staff member, consult a Savannah emergency room errors lawyer at any time for a free consultation. Evidence to support your claim may become difficult to locate as time passes, so act soon for the best chance of recovering compensation.
